A Yuletide Journey
by defying3reason
Summary: New 52/Preboot crossover. Hartley's stewing over his breakup on Christmas Eve until a sudden interruption from an unusual guest. Through the course of their conversation, they give each other some much needed advice. My obligatory dose of holiday saccharine.


****_A/N: Just a cutesy little one-shot. Take this as my obligatory dose of holiday saccharine this year (for holiday seasons past, check out Piper Presents and Happy Holidays: A Rogues Christmas Story). If you like what you see, feel free to check out my facebook page. My professional pen name is Valerie Myers, and my first published story came out a couple days ago. I'll also be cross posting my fan fiction to the page and will have other writing and fandom related updates there. Cheers! _

**A Yuletide Journey**

Hartley was very much still fuming over David, though he tried to tell himself he was being productive instead. He spent half the night in the living room sewing his new costume together, all the while mentally chanting justifications and rationalizations on why the silly black fabric in his hand had been worth the sacrifice of his relationship.

Dating David hadn't exactly been smooth or easy. They disagreed about almost everything, though their differences in view rarely led to actual fights. The only big, recurring one had been about David's insistence on barricading himself in the closet. Yes, it would make a mess of his work life, and his parents might actually disown him for being gay, but Hartley had gone through similar experiences himself during his teen years. Coming out had estranged him from the Rathaways for a fair few years, but once they'd reconciled, their communication had been infinitely improved by Hartley being able to be honest and open with them. He was sure David could achieve the same thing with his own parents if he could just take that (admittedly terrifying) first step.

Work was more difficult though. David had worked long and hard to get where he was in the Central City PD, and in Missouri there were no protections for wrongful termination against LGBTs. And then there was the matter of Hartley being an ex-Rogue…coming out at work could be incredibly problematic for David…

'Alright, so he can't tell his coworkers. He could still tell his close friends and family. He shouldn't have made me feel like he was ashamed of me,' Hartley thought viciously. As his thoughts darkened, he became more careless in his sewing, and then he stabbed himself under the fingernail of his right pointer finger with the needle.

The subsequent stinging dampened his enthusiasm for costume making, so he set the unfinished suit aside and went into his workroom to tinker with his arsenal of modified flutes and sonic guns.

For the next few minutes he lost himself in pleasant, nostalgic reveries of when he'd first made similar weapons and crafted an older, less flattering costume. Sure, he hadn't actually enjoyed being a supervillain that much once he'd begun the pursuit, but there had been some perks. He'd liked a few of his fellow Rogues well enough, and working outside the bounds of the law had been exhilarating.

And then there had been his encounters with superheroes and law enforcement. Playing head games with the Flash had been incredibly amusing, and flirting with David at the station, before he'd even realized the man was gay…

Dammit. He hadn't been trying to think of David, but he couldn't help it. Up until that very morning they'd been a perfectly committed couple, though obviously with some issues. He hadn't actually expected David to break up with him over his decision to enter public life again as the Pied Piper.

"It's not like I expected him to be pleased," Hartley murmured to himself and his mostly vacant (excepting a healthy population of rats) house. "But it's not like it could actually affect him and his reputation. He won't acknowledge he even knows me, outside of when he used to see me when I'd been arrested."

Hartley had still been a crook for the first year he'd known David. The Pied Piper had shamelessly flirted with the stoic and business-like police scientist, enjoying the way he got all discomposed in response and never guessing how thoroughly he'd been getting under the man's skin. Then they'd bumped into each other on one of those rare occasions when Hartley wasn't in handcuffs, and to his surprise, David hadn't called for back-up or tried to get him hauled back to Iron Heights.

They'd spent hours chatting with each other in a dingy little coffee shop. David spent the first hour or so shooting terrified looks around the place, sure someone would recognize him and report him for associating with such a flagrant criminal, and when Piper picked up on his anxiety he'd calmly leaned across the table, caressed David's hand, and assured him that with the sound field he'd set up around the table, no one would even remember seeing them.

From there they'd begun a friendship heavy with sexual tension, which had eventually burst along with a flood of emotion. David pleaded with Hartley to quit the supervillainy and reform, and he'd willingly done so. He'd convinced himself that that was all David would need to feel comfortable dating Hartley, and oh how wrong he'd been. So Hartley strove to be even more respectable. He pursued charitable activities to fix his reputation (and found out he rather enjoyed social activism), he'd fixed his relationship with his parents and gotten back in with the notable society in the Cities, and he'd even used his parents' influence to secure an impressive job with the Central City Symphony.

But David still wouldn't come out. He insisted it wasn't that he was _ashamed_ per se of dating a former criminal, but he still didn't think it was proper for the director of the Central PD crime lab to be that familiar with an ex-Rogue. Hartley had remade his life to suit David, and it hadn't worked.

"And the very first change I introduce to give _me_ a sense of fulfillment makes him pack it all in. The selfish son of a bitch," he snapped, voice quavering a bit. Hartley set his sonic gun down and shoved his bangs out of his eyes. "You will not call David. Let him come crawling back to you. Let him…"

He got up and started for the living room. His cell phone was sitting on an end table, along with two chubby brown rats who were looking at him in a way he was disposed to see as judgmentally (it was highly likely they just wanted some of the treats he habitually kept in his pocket).

"I wasn't going to call him," he said to the rats. He really hadn't had much of a reason to go into the living room though.

Before he could come up with a non-calling-David activity, a thunderous boom and the noise of rushing wind called his attention to the kitchen.

Hartley ran off to see what had happened, and was just in time to see a wormhole close up. A strangely dressed man was standing in the middle of the kitchen, adjusting his costume where the wormhole had pulled it into disarray.

The man looked to be somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. He was about the same height as Hartley and with a similar build, but he was severely underweight, and his pale skin looked stretched and unhealthy. He was a redhead as well, though his hair was a fair bit darker, and lacked the gold highlights that made Hartley look like a blond when he got too much sun (there was a healthy dusting of grey though). His eyes were obscured by green tinted glasses, but Hartley was sure they were a deep dark blue like his own.

He was sure of this, because the stranger was wearing a costume that looked quite a lot like the one he'd been sewing, and he was armed with his own small arsenal of sound guns and modified flutes.

"Are you from the future or an alternate universe?" Hartley asked, taking pains to keep his voice steady to hide how unnerved he felt.

The stranger finished with his costume, and then looked at Hartley, and his eyes widened ever so slightly behind the glasses. "I've yet to time travel with the boom tubes, so I'll have to assume I'm from an alternate universe. You look…well."

He was tempted to say that the stranger looked a mess, but that seemed rude. "Are you me?"

"I think so. Hartley Robert Rathaway?"

Hartley nodded. "This is a bit weird."

The other Hartley smirked. "I've seen weirder things."

"What are you doing here?" Hartley asked.

The older him didn't answer right away, as he was engaged in studying the tidy little kitchen. He noticed a couple of rats scurry across the floor, and he murmured under his breath about them. Just when Hartley was sure he'd forgotten his question entirely, he looked up again and gave a polite, but distant reply. "Honestly, I'm not quite sure."

"Oh. Well…do you want to go sit down?" Hartley smirked in self-deprecation. "When all else fails, fall back on the good breeding, I suppose. Would you like a refreshment, sir?"

The older him laughed. "Actually, if that wasn't entirely facetious, a glass of water would be nice. I've been traveling for quite a while without much of an opportunity for adequate nutrition and hydration."

"Living room's in there. Go have a seat and I'll be right in."

Hartley filled a glass of water for his guest and, thinking better of it, also grabbed a few granola bars. When he got to the living room the other him was sitting on the couch coaxing a few rats towards him, making cute chirruping noises that they seemed to appreciate.

"You're good with rats too, I suppose?" Hartley asked.

"Thank you," he said, taking the water and snacks, "And yes, I am. I imagine we have a lot in common. This universe doesn't seem that bizarrely different from my own. I suppose you've recently reformed and are now fighting crime instead of perpetrating it?"

"I reformed a few years ago, but I'm only looking into becoming an active crime fighter now." Hartley waved a hand to indicate the sewing supplies and the half-finished costume sitting neglected in front of his arm chair. "From the looks of it, we have a similar sense of style."

The other him frowned thoughtfully. "This was the third costume I picked after I reformed, and I started the crime fighting pretty much right away. Maybe our universes are more different than I thought. So Wally didn't bully you into accepting you were a superhero?"

"…who's Wally?"

"Well that answers that. He's the Flash, by the way. In my world, anyway."

"Oh. We don't actually know who the Flash is here. At any rate, _I_ don't talk to the guy." Hartley snagged a newspaper and dropped it on the coffee table in front of his guest. The front page featured a large shot of the Flash, with a nastily worded caption and an accompanying article calling him out on his recent betrayals of the citizens of Central City. "The news isn't terribly fond of him at the moment, but I'm sure that'll pass and he'll soon be considered the great hero he always was."

"Mm. In my world the Flashes date newspaper reporters. Seems to help their PR a little. That doesn't look like Wally though. I'm guessing you guys still have…perhaps I shouldn't give you the man's secret identity."

Hartley smiled. "Oh, don't hold yourself back on my account. By all means…" The other him remained stubbornly silent, and Hartley crossed his arms in a pout. "Well you're no fun. Do you know many superheroes' secret identities?"

"I've picked up a fair few. Of course, there's no guarantee they're all the same here."

"I guess. So what led you to start hopping universes?"

"Trauma, what else? Things weren't going that great for me in my home, I discovered some new abilities, and I've been taking them for a test run. I didn't want to spend Christmas Eve sitting in a decrepit building talking to rats, so I'm…yeah, this has really become my life." He seemed to be talking more to himself than Hartley, so Hartley let him alone. After a moment of awkward, melancholy brooding, the other him snapped out of it and tried to make some more civil conversation. "Is it Christmas time here too?"

"Yep. December twenty fourth."

"Ah. Then I've really only traveled universes, not in time. Um…may I ask why you haven't decorated?"

Hartley's face fell, but he recovered himself quickly. "I'd…put most of my efforts into decorating my boyfriend's place this year. We spent the brunt of our time there."

The older him seemed to be studying him. "You're in your mid-twenties, right? Are you dating James right now?"

"James?" Hartley repeated, shaking his head. "No, I've never dated a James. I just broke up with a David."

"Oh. Well I've never dated a David."

"So you're gay too, huh?"

The older Piper smirked. "That's something that seems to be true across universes so far."

"Good to know. I guess you're thoroughly born that way then."

"I'm sorry about David. Was it very serious?"

Hartley looked away, attempting to appear disinterested in the conversation. It was a horrible ruse, and the other him seemed to know him too well to fall for such tactics anyhow. "No, just…well, actually yes."

"I'm very sorry then. I haven't had much luck with love myself. It'd be nice to find a me somewhere who has, and really, you seemed promising. I don't think I was ever as good looking as you are, even when I was the same age."

Hartley laughed at the absurdity of a man who was essentially himself checking him out. "Well it takes some effort. The long hair's a bitch and a half to maintain, but I think it's worth it. Same with working out. You'd be just as pretty with a little work, I'm sure. Overall you're aging gracefully."

The other him leaned forward, smirking. "And just how old do you think I am?"

That was a terrible question. Hartley did not want to answer that in any shape, way, or form. "Um…if you're me you already know I'm really awful at guessing peoples' ages."

"But as I'm you, I won't be offended when you're totally off. Now how old do you think I am?"

"…forty six?"

The other him's face fell. "I'm thirty three. Do I really look like I'm in my forties already? Oh, that time in the desert must have had more of an effect on me than I thought."

"To be fair, between the hood, the glasses, and that unflattering bit of chin fuzz, I'm having a hard time seeing your face."

The other him rubbed absently at his chin. "I thought the beard made me look hip."

"It makes you look like a douchey beatnik."

"Well, no use arguing with myself." The older Hartley removed the green glasses and flipped down his hood. Hartley took the chance to study the man, and promptly assured him that he still looked to be in his thirties upon closer inspection. It looked like it had been a hard thirty plus years, and he definitely looked careworn, but his eyes were young and the lines at their edges weren't very deep.

"So you're going to shave off the soul patch, right?" Hartley pressed.

The other him looked a bit embarrassed, but he nodded. "James used to call it chin pubes. I guess I should finally take the hint."

"Past tense, huh? Did you get dumped for the holidays too then?"

The older man's expression darkened, and after a moment of haunted reflection he shook his head. The guy seemed to be prone to moody silences and sudden, haunted looks. He really hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said he was motivated by trauma. "This James wasn't my boyfriend."

"Oh. Did you want him to be?"

"What? No, of course not-"

"Hartley, you really can't lie to yourself," Hartley teased.

"Sure I can. I've always excelled at deluding myself. And besides, James was straight-"

"So's spaghetti until you heat it up."

There was an awkward pause. "That's terrible."

Hartley blushed. "I saw it on facebook the other day and thought it was clever. When you say it out loud it's just cheesy though. And actually a bit creepy. But are you really sure this James is straight? A lot of guys get into denial, but the right friend can get them to reflect, open up...and it seems like you really care about him-"

"He's dead," the other him said coldly. "He was shot in the head and the chest while shielding me."

"Oh." Well there was no getting around that. No wonder older AU him was so moody and depressed. "I'm sorry."

The other Hartley finished off his water and set the glass on the coffee table next to the empty granola bar wrappers. "As it appears I've only served to depress myself twice, I'll take my leave. Sorry to be such a downer on Christmas Eve."

"Well, um...glad I could distract you for a bit, at least. Is there anything I can...can do?" It felt like neglect, just letting the man go when he looked so vulnerable and miserable.

The other him smiled sadly. "If you want to help, go talk to David. See if you can fix whatever it is that got between you. It looks like you care about him too, and you should tell him the extent while you can." The other Hartley threw a glance at the costume sitting just behind him. "The lifestyle has a way of silencing people before they're ready."

"I'll...take that into consideration. Um...Merry Christmas, Hartley."

"I usually just go by Piper now. And Merry Christmas."

Piper went outside to the yard this time, which Hartley appreciated as the wormhole had created some disarray in his kitchen. The strange older man put one of his instruments to his lips, and a heartbeat later another wormhole appeared and whisked him away.

Hartley gaped at the empty yard in fascination. "I wonder if I can do that."

_Christmas Night_

Hartley took a deep, contented breath and snuggled closer to his recently reconciled lover. David wrapped a strong arm around him and kissed the top of his head. They still didn't see eye to eye on quite a lot of important things, but all that could be resolved later. The one very important thing they agreed on was that they wanted to be together when they figured everything out.

Hartley was just drifting off to sleep when he thought he heard a dull boom. He definitely felt the bed shake a little in response to the sound, but David remained fast asleep. Hartley carefully extracted himself from his boyfriend's embrace, crept out of bed, and put on a robe. He went downstairs, and wasn't entirely surprised to find Piper sneaking into his living room.

"Even if you're from another universe, this is still breaking and entering."

"I didn't think you'd be asleep so early. Nice tree, by the way."

Hartley grinned. "Brought it over from David's this morning. I took your advice."

"I can see that."

Hartley flushed a little, and adjusted his robe self-consciously. "Well anyway, um, what are you doing back so soon?"

Piper smiled almost giddily, and the joyful expression did wonders for him. Without the weight of misery he actually did look his age. "While I was out running away from my pain with the boom tubes there was a wave of resurrections in my home universe. James came back and...I thought over what you said...seemed like I ought to at least mention my feelings to him."

"Mm. Throwing yourself in front of a hail of bullets is a bit of a hint. So we're both madly in love?"

"Blissfully," Piper said with a nod.

Hartley grinned. "Glad to hear it. Merry Christmas, Piper."

"Merry Christmas, Hartley."

END


End file.
